What if Romney’s wrong? A look at renewable energy dollars and cents

The problem with renewable energy is that it just costs too much ‚Äď everyone knows that. Really it is just pie in the sky.

‚ÄúThe ‚Äėgreen‚Äô technologies are typically far too expensive to compete in the marketplace,‚ÄĚ says the Romney campaign‚Äôs energy policy statement. ‚ÄúThe failure of windmills and solar plants to become economically viable or make a significant contribution to our energy supply is a prime example.‚ÄĚ

It really depends on how you count up the dollars and how far down the road you look. Do you include all the subsidies and tax treatment for each technology? Do you look at future costs and future performance? Even the interest rate on money borrowed to build a project can make a difference.

So let‚Äôs put aside saving the planet or energy security or any Kumbaya moment and let‚Äôs just look at the dollars, cents and performance numbers.

Once again I‚Äôve written a wonkly-long, numbers-infested blog, so I offer a few best hits as an easy out:

‚ÄĘ When it comes to building and operating a new power plant in 2017 on-shore wind, geothermal and hydropower are cost competitive with nuclear power and coal, according to federal Energy Information Administration projections. Natural gas is the cheapest.
‚ÄĘ If the cost of carbon is added, granted an unlikely occurrence, onshore wind becomes the cheapest and solar gets close to coal.
‚ÄĘ ‚ÄúClean‚ÄĚ coal is not cheap. The 2010 capital cost of building a pulverized coal-fire plant was $2,890 a kilowatt-hour, with carbon capture it almost doubles, according to analysis by the engineering firm Black & Veatch. Just adding S02 controls boosts the cost 12 percent.
‚ÄĘ While the Romney campaign opposes extending the 2.2 cents per kilowatt production tax credit for wind power, saying all sources of energy should stand on their own, there is no mention of the 1.8 cents production tax credit for nuclear power which continues until 2022.
‚ÄĘ Utilities have announced plans to close about 300 coal-fired units and the National Energy Technology Laboratory doesn‚Äôt project any new coal plants after 2018.

Good article, but could you correct the numerous typos? And I don’t understand what you are showing for prices per kwh:
Pulverized coal plant ‚ÄĒ $2,890
Gas turbine ‚ÄĒ $651 million

Why is gas 5 orders of magnitude greater than coal?

http://westernwoman.myopenid.com/ westernwoman

Great article! Thanks for the homework and the numbers. It’s refreshing to see an honest reckoning of the cost of renewables. It’s a little unclear how fuel costs play into these numbers, for example whether those are taken into account in the Black & Veatch generation esimates. Also, I think it’s worth mentioning the externalities – other than carbon emissions – which are of course are paid for by taxpayers. For example the Harvard School of Public Health estimated that health costs – if included in the costs of coal – would raise the per kWh cost of coal to a range between 17 and 26 cents. This is real money, paid by families for asthma and other respiratory diseases.

Laurent Meillon

Great article Mr. Jaffe! Thank you.

http://www.solarpanelhosting.com Joy Hughes

Renewable energy doubled in the last four years, but is supposed to take 25 years to double again? By 2037 we could get to 100% renewables.

David joined The Denver Post in 1999, his second go-round in the Mile High City. Since then he‚Äôs covered a variety of topics ‚Äď from human services to consumer affairs ‚Äď most always with an investigative bent. Currently he does investigations and banking.